The Walking Dead Changes Jesus’ Name to Not Confuse Fans; Posts Wrong Name on Official Facebook Page

If you’re a fan of The Walking Dead comic book, you already know that Jesus’ official name is “Paul Monroe.” However, in the television series the character was renamed to “Paul Rovia.”

Viewers have been asking, “Why the name change?” Fortunately, in a recent interview with Comicbook.com, actor Tom Payne, who portrays Jesus in the AMC original series, weighed in on the switch.

“I have no absolute answer on that but my understanding of that is it’s purely for the people who don’t read the comic books to not be confused. I think because you have Deanna and her family and I think it’s just about, ‘What do you mean? Are they related?’ At the end of the day, the most important name is Jesus! Honestly, I don’t think you’re going to hear that name again. I think it’s just going to be Jesus now. I think that’s the thing which is great and I’m really glad they stayed with that because there was a lot of speculation about ‘Will they keep it Paul because Jesus is controversial?’ and ‘Blah, blah,’ but I’m really happy that it’s, ‘My friends call me Jesus.’ I read that line like, ‘That’s cool!”

That’s understandable. Introducing a character with the last name “Monroe” would likely confuse fans since the series just heavily focused the first half of Season 6 on Deanna, Reg, Aiden, and Spencer Monroe. And seeing as there turned out to be no relation between the characters in the comics, it makes sense that The Walking Dead would avoid the issue entirely.

Unfortunately, no good deed goes unpunished. On February 22nd, AMC’s official The Walking Dead Facebook page posted this status update.

Notice anything strange? Well, a fan of the comic book series must run the Facebook page since they accidentally used the name “Paul Monroe” instead of the show version, “Paul Rovia.” Oops!

Thankfully fans were so distracted by Richonne that they probably didn’t even notice.